When He Comes is a poem from the division Being in Turmoil of Says Tuka which weaves the theme of the signs of God‘s arrival to His devotees. The poem brings out that God visits his bhaktas whenever His devotees are in trouble.
Summary
Stanza 1
The first stanza indicates the speaker‘s belief when there are certain catastrophes; it is a sign of the arrival of God. The catastrophe mentioned in this stanza is the meteorite shattering the home of the devotee. The poet appeals to the devotees to rest as he way sure that this is the sign of God visiting him.
Stanza 2
When the natural calamities, destruct the living and nonliving beings and wipe out everything, these catastrophes are incapable of ruining the relations between the God and His devotees. It signals that the God is visiting his devotee.
Stanza 3
This stanza reminds his other abhang a which speaks of the importance of words or language. The language is everything for a human being. It has got a power to stir; it has got a sharpness to cut; it has got the power to sooth and so on. It is therefore, that one must respect the words.
God loves honesty, faithfulness, and sincerity that cannot be expressed in ritualistic language. When the language is ‘stripped naked‘ of these ritualistic traits which the poet calls ‘falsehood‘, it is again a sure indication of God visiting you.
Stanza 4
The poet says that when the human qualities are rent and ripen whose pieces cannot be brought together, it is the sign of God‘s visit.
Stanza 5
The poet says that when the man becomes desolate and despair, and he cannot see the rays of hope in the life, it is the sign of God‘s arrival for his devotee.
Stanza 6
The poet says that God comes for the rescue of the devotee when the later is robbed of everything; he has nothing and nobody to live with; and consequently the devotee becomes eloquent about his condition.
Stanza 7
The final stanza of the poem deals with the power of God, how He has grabbed His devotee completely. As a result, every movement of the devotee shows the presence of God in him, that is why the poet says:
“Tuka is raging
Like God Himself.”
Analysis
When He Comes is a poem which is a part of the section entitled, Being in Turmoil of Says Tuka. The line ̳God is visiting you‘ used as the refrain of the poem implies that the last savior of the human being is God. The most possible time for God to visit His creature is during the calamities, catastrophes and crisis in the lives of human beings. It is an optimism of the poet that though the natural calamities and crisis may finish all the materialistic things including all other human relationship but they will never dare or will be able to break or spurn the relationship between the God and his devotees. This is the central idea of the poem.
The semantic use of the stanzas of the poem is unique in which the unfavorable circumstances become the signs of meeting between the God and His devotee. Meteorite shattering home, catastrophes wiping out the human beings, devotees‘ language being stripped naked, the humanness being ripped off, mood being somber and hopeless, and man being robbed of all materialistic properties are employed as central images. These images evince that the destructive incidents are followed by the positive occurrences which is a natural course of happening; and thus these images signifying darkness give way to the brightness of God‘s arrival for His devotee.